PART 1 — Bridging the Gender Digital Divide in Tanzania

Greetings colleagues and comrades in development.

I pen these thoughts today from the confines of my home as I continue working remotely since we made the executive decision to do so as an organisation at the end of February 2020. Amongst many things, I personally think the ongoing COVID 19 Pandemic has retrospectively allowed for many of us to arrive at what we are capable of as organisations, and as individuals and most importantly what we are not capable of. It has also forced many of us into a corner and left us with no choice but to practice versatility and resilience, and lots of hand washing :)

With this circumstantial demand of versatility, resilience and agility, particularly towards transitioning to new business and organisational models , we have witnessed efforts focused on fast tracking the digitalization of some aspects and operations, if anything to achieve that business and organisational continuity.

The road from offline to online has never seen such backed up traffic with a plethora of innovative solutions being announced everyday as the whole world continues to adapt to COVID 19, the ‘now normal’, and what many have been dreading and dubbed as the ‘new normal’.

The impact of this pandemic is quite apparent with a wide range of reports globally and locally describing the socio- economic effects it has had on communities disproportionately, and continues to.